Jailed for stealing mother's £100k - leaving her homeless

Abbi Kinsella, a 54-year-old mother and former lottery-winner from Tamworth, has been jailed for raiding her mother's savings and leaving her without a roof over her head.

She spent the money on holidays, TV and online Bingo.

The theft

The Tamworth Herald reported that things were looking rosy for Kinsella in 1999, when she won £175,000 on the National Lottery. However, after she worked her way through her winnings, she preyed on her elderly mother instead.

Her mother, Margaret Bowyer, was suffering dementia, so rented the house next door. Over the next three years she transferred £61,000 from her mother's account to hers, and withdrew almost £40,000 in cash. She used £34,000 of the money to feed her online bingo habit, as well as holidaying in the south of France and taking out a £200 Sky TV subscription.

When her mother's cash ran out, Kinsella cancelled her mother's direct debit payments for her rent, gas, electricity, water and council tax in April 2011. By November 2012 her mother was left with £20,000 of debt and she was evicted - leaving her homeless. It was Social Services who stepped in at this point, placing Bowyer in a care home and referring Kinsella to police.

According to the Daily Mail, during the trial Kinsella made a number of claims as to why the money had gone missing and the direct debits cancelled, but the Judge remained unconvinced by it. Judge Mark Eades told her: 'You betrayed your mother's trust in a callous and unfeeling fashion. You bled her finances dry."

"You lied and lied and lied and lied and as each lie was demonstrated to be false you lied upon lie. You are a serial liar who has no conscience at all. You enjoyed living way beyond your means. You had a win on the lottery, you won a substantial sum that you got through very quickly and I dare say you enjoyed the freedom that win gave you. But when that money ran out, it strikes me, you had difficulty coming to terms with the position you were in before your win." She was jailed for four years.

Abused trust

It's a shocking case of abused trust, but sadly there seem an large number of people who are willing to use a position of trust in order to bleed someone dry.

We reported back in September on the accountant who stole £183,000 from the accounts of an elderly client. He calculated his crime so that he left her penniless on the day she died. He was sentenced to 38 months in prison.

That same month there was a former Sainsbury's employee who ran a lottery syndicate for her colleagues and when they won £4,550.60, she decided not to let them know. She eventually let it slip and earned herself a suspended prison sentence.

Within days of that there was the Post Office manager who took £31,800 from the tills at work. She spent it on holidays, a flat and shopping, and received a suspended prison sentence.

And in August we reported the story of Denise Salter, a 57-year-old building society manager from Barnsley who used her position to steal £250,000 from family and friends. She used the proceeds to pay her sons' debts.

Top postcodes for theft

Let us send you our Newsletter

Our editors will email you a roundup of their favourite stories from across AOL